Beautiful day

What a great day! We took our morning walk without freezing, slipping or sliding; even the mud in the pasture is drying up. I ponied Libby, then rode Blue. When I got back from my ride, I saw Cliff working on some electric fence. You see, he is going to have a garden. (Picture me rolling my eyes here.)

For at least twenty-five years of married life, I put out huge gardens and canned dozens, even hundreds, of jars of produce. I loved doing it.

Once the kids left home, though, I found those canned goods tended to stay in the basement unused, and I'd find packaged peas and okra in the freezer from five years earlier. I scaled down, and finally stopped canning anything but tomatoes; I had a job by then, and I was just too tired to mess with a garden when I got home in the evening. With only two of us, I found it made better economic sense to buy stuff from the store as I needed it. Besides, raising veggies just wasn't fun any more.

So I was down to nothing but tomatoes and a few pepper plants. Blight sneaked in one year. I started moving to fresh ground each year, but blight would appear; later than before, perhaps, but I was never free of it.

So last year I called it quits. And we pretty much went the whole year without tasting a decent tomato.

A couple of months ago I saw Cliff in the horse lot, plowing up a section.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"I'm going to have a garden," he answered.

I know his trick. He figures he'll get me interested, and he'll be off the hook. It's happened before.

So while I was helping him with the electric fence, I told him in no uncertain terms, "I'm NOT canning anything, unless we manage to raise some tomatoes."

"No, I don't expect you to; I just want some good food again once in awhile... green beans and new potatoes, peas, and some decent tomatoes... stuff like that."

Good luck with that blight problem, Cliff. Or maybe I should wish myself good luck.